What the best High Street law firms do…

If you don’t use a tablet and legal tech in court, you’ve probably contemplated doing it. But can you really use it to practise more effectively?

Carrying bundles of case files to court, or prison, or between office and home, can be disorganised and time consuming. What if somebody told you that all your file notes, witness statements, productions, correspondence and everything else you need could be available electronically on an iPad? Would you do it?

We reached out to Matthew McGovern, from McGovern Reid Court Lawyers, to find out how they are changing the game by using iPads in court…

When did you start introducing new tech?

“We had seen the Crown going paperless and operating iPads in court and we thought we should be doing the same. We also felt that the administrative burden placed on us by our client base and the court was becoming increasingly unmanageable and that technology could offer significant time savings, as well as reducing costs in the medium term. Early last year, we started using Denovo’s CaseLoad and we invested in iPads with keyboards and pencils. We now use our iPads at court daily and are carrying fewer and fewer paper files. It’s revolutionised the way we work.”

What was the key challenge you faced?

“Affordability was a key challenge for us. Most of our work is funded through legal aid and the fee rates are ultimately a significant barrier to investing in and developing our firm. While the technology and software required an upfront capital investment, that has been offset against a reduction in expenditure in other areas of the business and our initial analysis is that, notwithstanding that outlay, the technology we’ve introduced will represent a significant saving to the firm over the next couple of years.”

How has technology improved your working practices?

“The biggest improvement is the service we are able to offer our clients. This is most noticeable when an accused is appearing from custody. An accused is never more vulnerable or volatile than when being told that their bail is opposed. It can be difficult to obtain full instructions. We can now access multiple client files, including recently prepared criminal justice social work reports, which allow us to address the court fully about the client’s circumstances. While this might seem like an anodyne example, the easiest way to lose a criminal client is to get them remanded, and there have been a number of occasions this year when the difference between the sheriff granting or refusing bail has been the information we have been able to access through CaseLoad on our iPads.

“The other improvement we have noticed is our ability to adapt to the various changes in criminal procedure. In our local court in Hamilton there were three significant reforms to summary procedure in 2020 alone. Each placed an increased burden on us without offering any increase in funding to compensate for the extra work. The most recent reform introduced a pre-intermediate diet meeting between prosecution and defence. Before the changes to our practice, this would have involved our secretary finding the paper file, checking to make sure that disclosure had been matched up with the file, you hoping there was a phone number written on the front of the file and that the client would answer rather than returning the call when you didn’t have the paper file with you, and obtaining instructions before speaking to the prosecutor.

“Now we have everything saved on CaseLoad and we can immediately access the entire file and phone the client using their number saved on the system. Even if the client doesn’t answer and phones back later, discussing their case is easy as it is on our iPad which we always have within arm’s reach. As a result we can have an informed discussion with the prosecutor which can either resolve the case or prevent it having to call in court. A process which previously would have been extremely time consuming has been distilled to one phone call to the client and another to the prosecutor.”

Are you planning on introducing more tech in 2021?

“We are planning to start using Bundledocs. As court lawyers we need to keep track of lots of different documents. Bundle production is real drag on our resources. We know digital tools can save us up to 80% of our own and our support staff’s time. The real benefit to us of using e-bundling software is to manage the high volume document cases we have efficiently. Every bundle is automatically numbered, indexed, hyperlinked and bookmarked for quick and easy access. Documents can be uploaded directly from CaseLoad on our iPads. This is going to be a real gamechanger for us.”

The tools now exist for court lawyers to make the digital switch. Get a free demo and see why some of the most successful small to medium-sized law firms in Scotland use Denovo as their whole practice management software solution.